


Not Now, Not Ever

by ElyanWhite



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dead Friends, Emotional Constipation, Erring on the side of abstraction, Gen, Pseudo-brothers, Regrets, Team Tiedoll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 11:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13763577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElyanWhite/pseuds/ElyanWhite
Summary: A close call leaves Kanda on the verge of death, speaking through the veil with an old teammate.





	Not Now, Not Ever

" _Well, good morning, sunshine."_

Kanda came to himself slowly, his eyelids struggling to flutter open as wits and sensation started to return. He knew that something was wrong, but the rhythmic jingling nearby was making it hard to place what.

_Tingating, tingating, tingating-_

God, that was obnoxious. Obnoxiously familiar.

He forced his eyes to stop rolling back into his head and gathered rubbery limbs under himself, shuffling upright in the leaf litter to turn towards the sound. His vision took a moment to focus properly, but immediately Kanda recognized the wiry, hooded figure perched on the tree-stump, cross-legged and bouncing his bell off of his elbows in a merry clamor.

_Tingating, tingating-_

"Daisya, if you don't knock that off, I am going to gut you," he snarled with a voice that sounded unnatural to his own ears. Why did everything feel so off?

He was distracted by a glimpse of overly-long canines in one of Daisya's manic grins, which transformed into one of his sharp, rasping laughs, like the cawing of a crow.

"Bit late for that, isn't it, mate?"

And suddenly Kanda remembered that he wasn't twelve years old and waking up on the road with Tiedoll's team. He was twenty, in the middle of a mission, and he hadn't seen Daisya Barry since…

_The sun rising bloody over Barcelona, Daisya's scream petering out into static and Daisya crucified in chains and Daisya dead and-_

Kanda responded as any Exorcist with his experience did when someone looked like a friend and sounded like a friend but shouldn't be alive. He threw himself backwards out of range, an adrenaline charge electrifying the sluggishness out of his body, and when he rolled to his feet his hand was already poised to-oh hell where was Mugen.

He glanced down in disbelief and his Innocence was missing. He cursed the fog of a few moments ago for not realizing the weight was missing from his hip, sheathe and all, or, for that matter, noticing that he wasn't even in uniform. Kanda was hardly one to let himself be daunted by unfavorable situations, but he had to admit that the signs were not good.

"Relax, I'm not an Akuma."

Kanda whipped his head back up. Not-Daisya was still sitting, apparently unfazed, watching him with the almost predatory glint of amused interest that Kanda had reluctantly grown accustomed to seeing. He forced himself to ignore the sorrowful pang of once-beens and never-agains that came with the familiarity.

Most Akuma didn't act like the people who had formerly inhabited the body they were using. Who would have been fool enough to bring Daisya back, anyway? Kanda wholeheartedly swore vengeance on whoever had. It was one thing to see a friend (which he grudgingly admitted Daisya was) fall in the line of duty, but it was another to see them reanimated into a killing doll. It hit a little too close to home, and it was a hideous mockery of someone who to him had meant curiosity and laughter and a brother who hadn't minded that they weren't related.

"Shut up," he growled back, automatically grasping for his sword again. He clenched his fingers into a tight, angry fist when he was reminded of its absence. Essentially, he was helpless, either to defend himself or attack this…thing. The small action didn't go unnoticed by Daisya-or rather, what was wearing his skin.

He- it- snatched the bell out of the air in midtoss and gave it an extra shake just to annoy Kanda, accompanied by another wild grin. Kanda's eyes followed the bell suspiciously. The decorative metal cage with its spherical bronze knocker appeared to be the same as Daisya's Charity Bell, which he was sure had been destroyed. Forget signs, there was a whole blasted directory leading to everything that should not have been happening here.

"I mean it," insisted Daisya, "I'm not one of them. You don't have your Innocence here because you don't need it."

Kanda, despite his situation, gave him a severely derisive look to communicate the he would have to be an epic idiot to believe anything an Akuma told him. In the back of his mind, he kept running through his options-no point in running, no point in fighting…

Daisya sighed and rolled his shoulders back under the cropped black cloak of his old uniform, which he was still wearing for some reason. "Seriously. Look around."

Kanda did, after he was sure that not-Daisya wasn't going to make any moves. Reluctantly, he flicked his gaze around in a brief survey of the area-after all, Akuma very rarely came individually, and it was highly likely that there were more lurking nearby. There were certainly lots of places they could be concealed in the forest around them-the heavy tree canopy, the ugly tangles of roots, and the thick, long-living tree trunks, scoured by hours of swordplay.

Wait.

There was another dry " _keh keh keh_ " from behind him, which Kanda paid no mind to, staring around like someone he probably would have wanted to slap on any other occasion. Kanda spun like an irate weathervane in the other direction, and spotted, sure enough, the forbidding tower of the original Black Order rising over the tree line, completely visible and in one piece.

Finally, Kanda wheeled back to Daisya. "Did you do this?" he demanded.

He'd said he wasn't an Akuma, and maybe he'd been telling the truth. That one Noah could shapeshift, after all, and couldn't that one weird little girl make her own worlds…?

But the object of Kanda's aggravation just sighed again, like  _he_  was the problem here. "No, you did."

Kanda narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Daisya-or whatever he was-cocked his head forward, the shadow of his cowl making the tapering stripes under his eyes stand out like slashes down his cheeks. His cat-like pupils glittered blackly out at Kanda, very real and very Daisya.

"Hate to tell you, old friend, but you took a swan dive down a ravine, and your soul, uh, stepped out for a moment. This is pretty much your consciousness."

The former Exorcist clicked his tongue at the gloomy gray overcast, as though he hadn't just told Kanda that he was having some sort of dying hallucination about a dead man and a ruined home (like Kanda hadn't had enough of  _those_  before), and started jiggling his knee up and down. Kanda sourly remembered that he never could keep still.

"It's sort of boring here," Daisya complained off-handedly. "And lonely. Like you." He squinted down his crooked nose at Kanda and stuck his tongue out, but Kanda was in no shape to react to the antagonism. It had struck Kanda just now that he was trapped in the supposed afterlife with only  _Daisya Barry_  for company.

"I'm in Hell," he concluded grimly.

Daisya snickered. "Nothing that damning, sorry. You're not dead yet, just in limbo or somethin'. How should I know?"

"Because you're dead," Kanda pointed out savagely. He resolutely denied to himself that this conversation was happening.

"That I am," Daisya agreed placidly. "But I'd rather not talk about it. It was kind of a dumb way to go. I mean, no real man can ever say he got killed by  _butterflies_. Even if it was interesting, at least."

"What was dumb was you taking on a Noah," Kanda spat back. "And not making sure your equipment was working before walking into a city filled with Akuma."

Some of the sting came from having seen Daisya laid out on rags with his torso caved inwards against organs that weren't there, and some of it came from lingering distrust, though he found that instinctively he was accepting what was happening. He almost wanted to be glad to see his cheeky teammate again. Almost. (Except also not at the same time, because Kanda was Kanda even when possibly not alive anymore.)

Daisya waved him off in an infuriating manner, clipping his bell deftly back onto the end of his long, elfish hood and coming to his feet in a characteristically explosive burst of energy. "Yeah, well, you just splattered yourself  _aaaall_  over the bottom of a ditch, so we'll say we're both idiots and leave it at that."

Kanda pictured that in very vivid detail, and sort of did feel like an idiot.

"Che."

"Yeah, yeah." Daisya snorted and put his hands behind his head. "It's good to see you, too. Let's take a walk, hey?"

Kanda did not want to take a walk,  _hey_ , but Daisya ambled past him in the direction of the Order without waiting for his response, and looking at his back he somehow couldn't find the words to form one. His temper was subdued by trying to wrap his head around…well, being dead, among other things. Kanda was a fatalist at heart, and with his wealth of personal experience, one wouldn't think that Kanda had too many misconceptions about death, but all the same, Kanda's whole being denied that it had happened.

Even knowing that his every breath was dictated by the whimsy of thirteen petals in a glass, he'd always thought he'd end with a shout and not a whisper, like the great rumbling cacophony of Skinn Bolic's room collapsing around him, or the Gatling thunder of Akuma bullets. Not a vague impression of whistling wind in his ears before…this.

Kanda could find nothing to do but follow.

His long strides quickly brought him up to the stockier man, and he was briefly in his mind a child again, tagging grumpily along in the trail of the elder. "Oi, Daisya, where are you going?"

"This is your mind, you tell me," Daisya replied, and then cackled again.

Kanda gave him a disgusted look. "Don't try to be funny, idiot."

But sure enough, he somehow knew exactly where to go, and between one blink and the next they were both standing before the grand citadel of the Black Order (the mechanics of which Kanda tried not to think too hard about), the Gatekeeper's huge, carved face etched into an image of lifeless sleep that belied the faint aura of animation it had usually given off.

He half-expected it to spring to life and flash the harsh examination lights  _right in his eyes_  like it always had, but it stayed still and silent, for all the world like any ordinary statue. Now that he thought about it, Kanda realized that he couldn't hear the leathery rustling of bat-like golem wings, and he hadn't seen a single blink of red light in the perpetual gloom. The place really was deserted- it was just him and Daisya and whatever else his imagination cooked up. No one would even know he was here. No one would-no one-

In the still air, a sharp breeze suddenly sprang up, catching at his hair and sleeves. It was dry and hot, completely at odds with the dreary damp of the seabound island, and in the brief flash of heat he tasted dust instead of salt. Inexplicably, Kanda felt the same urgent drive that had led him here in the first place, and he just knew that he had to be somewhere, had to-on the other side-if he could just get through the  _door_ , if the Gatekeeper would just-

… _Wake up._

_Kanda, if…can hear…wake up._

_**Wake up!** _

"Naw, he's not gonna wake up. Whether or not the doors open is entirely up to you."

Daisya's scratchy tenor jolted him out of the fever haze, and he snapped his head to the side to find his teammate completely undisturbed next to him.

"What are you talking about?" Kanda managed. As quickly as it had arrived, the instant of surreal heat had died, leaving him with sweat prickling across his skin as it cooled. He was sort of dizzy, too. Why was he dizzy? Did vertigo even exist in the afterlife?

"You've already started catching on, right? You've gotta go through those doors to get out of here. If you don't, then this time," and Daisya was much closer than Kanda remembered him standing a moment ago, though he was sure he hadn't moved, "you'll stay dead."

His black eyes laughed, like they always did, but Kanda could tell that he was serious, as serious as Komui, every other mission,  _the lotus, Kanda, how many petals_ -

"Bro, I'm serious, you've gotta get out of here. Your lotus won't heal you if it doesn't think you're alive."

His first thought was that he'd never told Daisya about the lotus. Granted, it probably wouldn't have been too hard for Daisya to figure out, seeing as the hourglass was the one material possession that Kanda ever clung to with the same ferocity as Mugen-had ever clung to at all, in fact. Besides, Daisya was just good at that. Figuring Kanda out, that was.

Even so. He couldn't possibly have known how it worked, and certainly not better than Kanda did. The world around him seemed a little dimmer, somehow. Less solid. Less…real.

"So," he muttered, squinting as everything seemed to waver for a second, "to get out, I have to go inside. How does  _that_  work?"

Daisya shrugged cheerfully. "It's symbolic, probably. This is a reflection of your mind."

Kanda grumbled bad-temperedly at him, unable to stop his eyes from tracking up along the studded arches, up along the Gatekeeper's rough contours, even though it seemed liked his head was getting…heavier. He had to find it, blast it. He didn't know what, he just had to. And then-

Daisya must have been wrong and the Gatekeeper must have just been playing possum, because Kanda's gaze only climbed one more inch before blinding light was glaring directly into his retinas, flooding his vision with white, pure white-

_Oh, gods, Yuu…is he…?_

_Get him out of the sun…Lavi, help me…_

Kanda recoiled were he stood, cursing as dazzling afterimages swam in his eyes. He was steadied by Daisya's hand on his shoulder, and between hard blinks he made out that the sky was still gray as ever and, miraculously, the two heavy slabs that guarded the Order's inner fortifications had lifted like portcullises. Or at least, he assumed they had, for there had been no noise or discernable movement. Honestly, he wasn't paying much attention to whether or not what happened was making sense anymore.

Kanda straightened up slowly, unsurprised to realize that he could no longer actually feel the weight of Daisya's touch, and stared into the gaping dark entries, twin gaps in the mortar teeth of the building. Livid spots still danced in and out of sight, eroding bits of the world like embers eating fiery holes into parchment, but the way was open. He could go.

Everything was turning dull and brittle around him, the trees losing their color, the richness leaving the soil, the definition of the stones blurring together into a continuous gray mass. The only things left with any clarity were the gateways, which weren't unfocused liked the rest of his surroundings were becoming, and which still gave a sense of permanency.

His instincts' anxious nagging to go to them (or maybe to escape through them?) returned twice as strong, urging him to put one foot in front of the other until he passed through the black and was gone, gone to where the light was, to the heat and the wind and the dust.

He had actually, unthinkingly, taken a step forward when it occurred to him to look back at Daisya, who had also moved forward, as though to stop him.

Kanda, for all his apathy, was attentive to the people he defined as "his", and he caught the conflicted expression on the face of the man he'd been raised with. That in itself was enough to make him pause, because Daisya was  _never_  conflicted. Daisya was always sure of himself, always set on what he wanted to do even when it was based on spontaneity.

"Daisya?" he said gruffly, brows furrowing together.

"Kanda, listen," the ex-Exorcist said, again becoming unusually somber. "I should probably tell you. You…"

He took a breath, searching for the words (he'd never been good with them) and what he said next had Kanda rooted to the spot.

"Let me be clear," Daisya began with a weak smile, "I want you to go through those doors. You're, like, you're like one of my kid siblings back home who would always get on my nerves, you know, but it's my job to take care of 'em, even though they're annoying and think they can take care of themselves _._  But this is your decision to make.

"You can walk away from the war now, and end the curse. This is probably the only time you'll get this chance. The lotus will let you die here, if you choose to stay, and you can cheat the spell. But if you go through the door and decide to live, you'll be part of the fight again, and a pawn of the order, until the curse ends you. You won't be able to control it, and you know it."

Kanda took a shuddering breath, because he  _did_  know it, and he hadn't even thought of it like that. Here was his chance to spit in the Order's face for dragging him back to life, to reclaim the death that should have been his.

"You were the one telling me to leave just now," he pointed out evasively, but Daisya said nothing, just watched him with his jaw tight, so Kanda turned to the side, committing to neither path, and thought.

It was tempting, to stay here. Kanda was tired of the Order's ridiculous cloak-and-dagger politics, and the constant paranoia of knowing that your own side could strike at you just as readily as the enemy. He'd  _been_ tired years ago, when that Akuma bled him out in the field and took him from the one he loved. He didn't  _care_  what happened to the Order, and he didn't want to fight, not really, so if here he could, finally, find oblivion, then maybe it was worth staying.

But all the same…

Kanda swore he heard wind again, humming over the stones of his old home, shrilling plaintively around the pillars and stair edges like a song ending in Mater,  _I want to be a destroyer and a savior_ -

And he remembered  _that person_ , plus a thousand things left undone. He had to find  _her_ , of course, the thing that always got him back on his feet when he was struck down, but he was surprised to realize that wasn't all he still had to do. He had to yell at Allen, after all, for being so helpful and annoying and way too eager to throw himself onto the pyre, and he had to make Lavi be honest with himself for once, and he had so many small promises to keep to Lenalee at this point that he only knew he couldn't disappoint her.

That was right. He had to pick a few more fights and raise a little more hell and get whacked over the head with a clipboard a few more times. He had to see the Destroyer of Time save the world, see Komui's beautiful sister turn the rest of the way into a woman, and if nothing else he had to watch the Bookman Junior walk away from the Order, though it would break his heart more than he'd ever want to admit.

He had a war to win.

He had  _them_  to take care of, so long as his short life permitted.

He had some  _living_  to do, because there were still things, people, waiting for him. People like  _her_ , who thought that he was worth waiting for.

Kanda faced the specter of his comrade full-on. "I have to go back," he told Daisya, and he was as surprised by his own resolution as he was by how  _apologetic_  he sounded.

Daisya' angular features relaxed into relief and he threw his head back in laughter that rang as brazenly as his bell. The motion swept the hood off of his head, so that Kanda could see tufts of his brown hair poking boyishly out of the bandages there.

"Yeah, I guess you do," he said to Kanda, his mouth pulled up at one corner into a fond half-smile. "I was worried for a moment, there."

Guilt stabbed at Kanda again, and this time it hit him like a blow from Lavi's hammer why he hadn't been sure he was ready to walk away just yet. For Kanda there was soul-crushing regret and annoyed indifference, and he hadn't had much experience with the in-between, but he  _remembered_.

He remembered what it had been like, stumbling over to brace himself shoulder to shoulder with Marie, the metallic sting of blood and Mugen sitting on his tongue, while the day dawned on a ragged corpse that had been babbling and bouncing and alive mere hours before.

He remembered how Daisya had been packed away with a hundred other men who were going home in boxes, and how both he and Marie had known that there wouldn't even be ashes left by the time their journey ended. Then he remembered being swept out of Barcelona because there was no time, no time to settle, and he remembered listening with Marie, listening and waiting as they left the wounded city behind them for their comrade to come back and break their silence.

"Do you ever…" he started, less rough than usual, and didn't know how to continue. What could he say?

Kanda wasn't sure how to express himself in terms that explained the long, long missing, or how he'd been so helplessly angry with himself, because he didn't know how to  _be_  anything else, because if he wasn't he would  _care_. Because they were Exorcists, and things  _happened_  to Exorcists, but…Kanda knew that, it was just…Kanda had  _been_  there, and so had Marie, and it was all just…

"Don't hurt yourself," Daisya broke in, and Kanda wanted to hit him. He probably would have, but Daisya recognized the signs (like most close friends of Kanda's could, after the first black eye) and made a pacifying gesture that failed to pacify. "Sorry, sorry," he hurried to say. "You'd be surprised what starts seeming funny after you're dead."He showed his teeth again in a weak, faintly bitter smile, and because it was Daisya he got away with it. "What I meant was that there's nothing you have to say to me. About anything, then or now. My time was up, you know? The sand ran out in my hourglass."

Kanda had to keep himself from wincing outwardly, because boy, did he hate hourglass analogies. But Daisya wasn't done.

"I mean," he went on, seeming to read the thoughts right out of his head (probably because they were  _in_  his head), "I'm not like you. I never had anything I was tryin' to accomplish, really, I just wanted to be an Exorcist because I couldn't have been anything else. I didn't leave anything behind that I would blame you for going back to. So quit worrying about it."

"What're you, a mind-reader now?" Kanda grumbled dispiritedly. Trust Daisya to lay out his entire soul based on a few words, even if this was just his mind telling him what he secretly hoped he'd hear.

"Maybe. Or maybe you're just too easy to read, kid." Daisya's bell chimed decisively as he stepped away from him, standing out bright against the fakeness of the dream. He swept an arm out toward the door. "Anyway, you've got somewhere to be, don't you? Running late's not like you."

"Che. Of course not."

It was getting harder to say what was and wasn't like him nowadays.

But really, Kanda Yuu, killed by a bit of a drop? How ridiculous was that?

"Butterflies," Daisya reminded him, apparently reading his mind again.

"What _ever_."

"And hey, one more thing."

Kanda spun on his heel again, absolutely determined that  _this time_ , if it was more uncomfortable touchy-feely crap, he was going to find a way to enact violence on the dead. Yet Daisya caught him off-guard yet again.

"This is a pretty literal trip down memory lane for you, as I said…but you should know that I chose to be here."

He laughed one last time, teasing and carefree like Kanda knew he would never hear again, and looked him in the eye with a spark of the old mischief.

"You're not nearly imaginative enough for this."

He pulled him into a hug, and this time he felt it, fierce and assuring, before Daisya stepped back and gave him a shove that Kanda was embarrassed to admit unbalanced him a little.

Then, before he could think about it, he was through the gates and inside the home he had once known, moving forward, past the spot where he'd been welcomed back every mission, and moving upwards, like the lotus towards heaven.

There he ascended, flashing by the rings of uniform rooms, in one of which there was a cracked window that had never been fixed and a place where a little girl had come to roost when she was upset, trying so hard not to cry that her face bunched up and turned red like a tomato. And still his instincts led him on, to  _the lotus_ , and  _the sun_ , and the  _help_ , and  _Lavi_.

Up the stairs he went, releasing regrets and old memories until bells rang in the halls behind him, up and up and up-

_Light_.

Kanda's eyes flared open and he dragged in a breath of real air, only to immediately hate himself for both. He dropped his head to the side and hacked inelegantly on the cloud of dust he'd just inhaled, eyes watering from the oily tang of recently killed Akuma. Reflexively, he tried to bring a hand up to swipe away the sweaty hair clumping uncomfortably along his face, only for his arm to seize at his side as his body reminded him that it was in  _pain_.

Someone else's grimy hand did it for him, but it had clever Bookman fingers that whisked away before Kanda could bite them.

"Ooh, I wouldn't try getting up if I was Yuu."

_Lavi_. Kanda groaned and shifted his head back, neck making some ugly crackling sounds, and glared up from under sticky eyelids to let him know that he'd  _heard_  what he did there and that payback was imminent. "Go screw yourself."

His answer was relieved laughter. "Hey, Marie, the princess is alive and kickin'!"

This time, Kanda managed to snag the end of the idiot's scarf and pull until he whined, and since Kanda was all in all not unhappy to be alive (and maybe okay with seeing Lavi again, kind of), he got off with just that.

"He  _knows_ , idiot," he grumbled, and sure enough, Marie's broad shoulders appeared silhouetted under the rocky teeth of the alcove they were sheltered in, blocking out some of the piercing sun, bless him.

"Kanda, you reckless fool," his fake brother greeted him.  _Bless_  him.

"Che."

Lavi shook his head in amusement above him, dislodging a shower of dirt from his cherry-red rat's nest onto Kanda's frowning face. " _Che_."

"Well, good morning, sunshine," the hammer-wielding Exorcist snickered.

"Shut up, Daisya," Kanda mumbled back, and Marie looked sharply over at him (well, he didn't  _look_ , but he angled his head very emphatically).

"…What did you say?"

_Right_. "Nothing," he said quickly. "Where's my sword?"

Lavi hefted the sheathed blade with way too much joviality for someone holding anything of Kanda's. "Right here, Yuu-chan!"

" _Then give it to me so I can kill you_."

"Ha ha, careful! You'll scare off aaaall the pretty girls that way-"

"Die, rabbit."

A fair bit of scuffling later, during which Kanda got Mugen reattached to his hip and Lavi put his hands all over Kanda's hair just because, Kanda was stiffly helping Marie pack up the last of their camp. He ignored the way that Marie was trying to do most of it in the same way that he was ignoring how he felt dead on his feet-he had, after all, been dead enough to have a chat with Daisya.

What he couldn't ignore was Marie's contemplative silence, which had been on the verge of breaking for almost a minute.

"What?" he finally snapped.

Marie didn't so much as twitch at his outburst. "It was strange," he said in his voice like smooth river rocks. "Just before you woke up...I thought I heard a bell."

Kanda stopped, and he wondered for a moment about souls and spirits and Allen Walker's idea of heaven.

"You're imagining things," he told Marie.

_What will I leave behind?_


End file.
